Many existing operating systems, such as the Microsoft Windows™ operating system, use graphical user interface (GUI) desktop environments to organize computer objects. A GUI allows a user to graphically view and manipulate the objects as icons using a mouse or a pointer. A GUI of the Microsoft Windows™ operating system is window-based. Microsoft Windows™ allows a user to have multiple applications active in multiple windows at the same time, each window having different functional characteristics.
A window, as used for example in the Microsoft Windows™ environment, specifies an area of a computer screen, typically rectangular in shape, which an application dedicates to a specific function. A window, by default, occupies a preselected area on a display as determined by an application that runs the window, however, the dimensions of the window can often be modified by a user. In the current window environments, a user may resize a window by dragging a window's vertical or horizontal border or a window's corner to a new position to modify the x-dimension, the y-dimension, or both x- and y-dimensions of the window, respectively.
Typically, as a window is being resized, the content of the window does not change, including the size of the font, icons and graphics. However, as the window is resized to a reduced area, the amount of visible content displayed may change such that the window displays only a portion of the original content that fits in the reduced area. Windows typically include scroll controls allowing a user to manipulate data displayed in window of a smaller size. By manipulating the scroll controls, a user may control which portion of the original content is displayed in the window at any point in time. Rather than providing only a portion of the original window's content when a window is resized, some applications re-scale the full original content of the window upon resizing of the window, thus allowing a user to view the full content without the need to use the scroll controls. This solution however has its drawbacks. For example, as a window is resized and the content is made smaller, the rescaled content may become too small to enable a user to effectively view and use it.